Bidding war

The guide price going into the auction was £600,000 for a volume that is one of only 18 surviving copies.

But a bidding war between three rivals pushed the auction up to a hammer price of £900,000, with the buyer paying £1,082,500 after the Sotheby's added its commission.

Sotheby's books specialist Gabriel Heaton said the work marked "a watershed moment in literary history when 'the father of English printing', William Caxton, embarked on the radical commercial decision to print the first book in English".

"Produced at a time when printing in the vernacular was still in its infancy, and when there was a relatively small domestic readership, this was a risky enterprise", he added.

The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye was the first book Caxton printed, and its production appeared to take its toll on a man who was a leading figure in the 15th Century English mercantile community.

In the book's epilogue, Caxton said "In the writing of the same my pen is worn, mine hand weary and not steadfast, mine eyes dimmed with overmuch looking on the white paper".